Tuesday, 21 March 2017

We slept under rayon covers

The arrival of spring and warmer nights is always a problem in the sleeping arena as I need a heavy quilt. Trouble is heavy quilts tend to be too hot so I end up with two thinner ones!

It wasn't this complex when I was a wee nipper in the Sixties. Quilts didn't exist in our house. Maybe nowhere in the UK? In those days the key idea was layers.

And boy were there layers.

First up was the sheet, usually white and made of something halfway natural like cotton. Next came the blankets and that's were concepts like skin-freindly went out the window. They were usually made of yak hair or maybe yeti fur, something that lived above the tree line.

Sixties blankets were intolerable, itched like itching never would again and were always a sickly grey or thin soup brown hue. They were clearly Tudor but we still bought them in BHS or Marks and Sparks. Probably the medieval bedding department. Monks were sent there for sackcloth!

It didn't end there. Topping the sandwiched blankets was the least natural, the most heinous, the entirely alien bedspread. Mine was imported under armed Gammorheann guard from the planet Rayon in the Crimplene system.

There was more static in those covers than a mammoth's backside. One false move could light the whole bed up. Lethal to the touch as well, bedcovers had frilly edges like sea anemones. If these brushed against you you were dead, writhing in a world of nylon pain and yak hair hell.

To add insult to injury the whole layer cake was tucked in so tight that getting in bed was like opening King Tut's tomb. Sliding down Gave you the bends so the first job was to kick the corners out from berween the mattress and the bed, otherwise cooking wOulu begin within seconds.

The one good thing about these covers was that the different layers could be booted off in the event of overheating.

However, the sheet could never be chucked, God forbid, as this was the only protection against The Wolf Man, Dracula, Frankenstein and all the other monsters living in the wardrobe! How those nasties never saw me peeking through that tiny hole I'll never know!

4 comments:

I was referred to as "The Reptile" in my childhood.Not just because of my love for dinosaurs, Godzilla and such,but because even in the height of Summer I would sleep under a mountain of blankets,like a hibernating lizard.My mother insisted on neatly made beds with covers that were decidedly "form over function".These starchy decorations were thrown on the floor by me nightly and replaced with my Psychedelic Tie Dye sleeping bag,discolored from countless camping trips.These days,with a more mammalian metabolism, I prefer Fleece in Winter and high count cotton in Summer.

Gaw... you've awoke some nightmare memories of troubled sleep with your wonderfully accurate description of bygone bedtimes, Woodsy! In our house we didn't have central heating back then. I don't think many people did? I remember cold winter nights when the sheets were freezing cold. Bedtime in our house was akin to climbing into a freezer, except for the occasional and very welcome intervention of the humble hot water bottle :)

Not sure about heating Tone. Thats an interesting question. I will have to ask my Sisters whether we had heating at home. I know we had gas fires in downstairs rooms and at least one coal fire, which was enclosed like a modern wood burner. Hot water bottles were a feature of my life too. Ioved the smell of warm rubber!